Maelstrom
by morning's-broken-angel
Summary: Deuces Wild. Marco Vendetti was a lot of things, most of them bad, but even he was capable of more than just violence. When his world was spinning out of control, he went to the one person that let him be at peace, even if only for a moment. Set in-movie.


A/N: It seems that I've got a bit of an obsession with Norman Reedus these days- Deuces Wild was on TV the other night, and I couldn't resist writing this after I saw it. Yeah, admittedly the movie was kind of a cliche fest, but I have to say that he played a very convincing bad guy as Marco.

If anyone else is going to read this, I hope you enjoy it. There doesn't seem to be very many Deuces Wild fics here. Maybe a BDS fan or two will wander over for a read. If you do, please let me know what you think. I'm quite satisfied with the piece.

Love,

MBA

* * *

Marco Vendetti was ruthless; he always had been. From the first moment he could remember, he had wanted to collect things- toys, people, money, food, whatever he could get his grubby little boy hands on. That never changed. Marco had an appetite for everything and, by fifteen, had showed the developing charisma that would make it possible.

Manipulation came to Marco as easily as breathing. Kiss Ma and Grandma every morning and they thought the sun rose out of his ass. Do Sal down at the garage a few favors and he got his first car for free. Tell all the girls they were the only one for him and they'd drop their skirts faster than you could blink. Oh yes, Marco had life figured out nicely at fifteen.

At sixteen, he realized that you need money to get anywhere in life. Oh, this little shithole neighborhood of his was largely accepting of their poverty, but he wasn't. Marco wanted more than a fourth floor walk up. He dreamed of sprawling estates, fast cars and faster women, and when he was approached by a lackey of the drug king of Brooklyn, Marco made the deal. Selling junk made him money hand over fist, and if these fuckers wanted to shoot shit into their veins, he'd be more than willing to oblige them. Marco never touched the stuff. A cigarette and a beer and the swarming buzz of adrenaline he got thinking about how to advance his status was enough of a high for him. You can't own the world if you're slave to the needle.

The Vipers were his creation. He took the group of local guys that alternately worshipped and were terrified of him and molded them into a real gang. He supposed he could call them friends, but none of them really were. They were means to an end, and that end was domination of the neighborhood. Marco secretly suspected his ancestors were Roman legionnaires, tearing through foreign lands in search of pillage, plunder and pussy. That need burned in his own veins, to own, to conquer. And he did. Little by little, the Vipers' influence seeped into every corner of the neighborhood. He walked down the street and old men nodded to him in respect. Kids shouted greetings to him in hopes of him gracing them with a reply. Girls huddled in groups and shot him coy smiles as they fluttered their eyelashes. He owned them all.

And then that bastard across the street, Leon, had turned nark after his junkie brother OD'ed. When he was arrested, Marco sat smugly in the interrogation room. He'd get out of this; he'd never had to face consequences before, why should this time be any different? At his trial, he numbly listened to the guilty verdict. He'd searched for Leon's face in the crowd, prepared to hop the railing and strangle the motherfucker with his handcuffs, but he wasn't there, and Marco was left with three years to stew over his revenge.

Prison was like the gauntlet he'd created to test new Viper pledges. The first hit was the worst, the second knocked the wind out of you and the third made you want to fall to your knees and stay there. The key was to keep your feet moving, to be stronger than the pain. Marco had always been stronger than the pain. The first two days in prison had been filled with men twice his size taunting him and saying how he was going to be their pretty little bitch. His first fight had left him with a busted nose and a finger he'd had to reset himself, but he'd shown his cellmate that he was nobody's bitch. The next dozen fights blurred together in his mind. The only distinct memory he had of any of them was driving a shiv into one fucker's nuts, and that was only because the dumb bastard had tried to violate Marco in the shower. After that, he was largely left alone, dubbed the crazy little wop that no one wanted to fuck with. There was always some new piece of fresh meat to torment, anyway. The three years dragged by slowly.

When Jimmy Potts picked him up fifteen minutes late, Marco thought he would explode. Rage, pure and clean, thrummed through his body. He'd been forgotten by everyone- this shitty little neighborhood, the Vipers, even Potts. Well, they'd remember. They'd all fucking remember Marco Vendetti if he had to burn every last place to the ground. His name would be spoken in awe, whispered in hushed tones long after he'd moved on to bigger things.

He made a deal with that two-bit Mafioso piece of trash and then he walked home, cigarette hanging from his lips. No one nodded to him or called out his name. That bitch Betsy, Leon's girl, actually turned her back on him. She'd pay. They'd all pay. Thoughts were whirling in his head, pounding and shrieking in a cacophony that wouldn't die down. Abruptly changing course, he went to a building a few over from his place and climbed the fire escape, all the way up to the fifth floor. The window he wanted was closed, the curtains drawn. He pounded a hand on the frame, alternately cursing and calling her name.

The curtains parted and he finally saw Vera for the first time in three years. They didn't say a word to each other as she unlocked and opened the window, rubbing sleep from her eyes. The maelstrom of noise in Marco's head died, just like it always did around her, and the sudden silence in his mind was just like that first gulp of beer after prison. Long missed, and somehow different from what he remembered. Sweeter for the lack of it after all this time.

She looked better than the last time he'd seen her, healthier. The doctors said she had a year to live just before he'd been arrested, and some sane corner of Marco's mind was relieved. He'd never said goodbye before he'd left, pissed at her because he thought she was going to abandon him, die on him. Now she told him that she was having a good spell, and he nodded. That was good. When she was gone, he'd be stuck with the noise forever. Until then, he'd use her quiet presence whenever she'd let him. Reaching out, he wrapped a hand in her black hair and pressed a kiss to her forehead before handing her an apple he'd swiped on the way there.

He was incapable of telling her he cared for her, and she knew that. Vera wasn't entirely sure Marco's feelings were like any other boy's- no, man's. He'd been gone for three years. He was all grown-up, not the boy she knew. Still, she understood something about him. His madness, his thirst, drove him as surely as the heart beating in his chest. He used people, wrung them out like a dishrag and tossed them away when they were useless. He'd do it to her too if she didn't die on him first, even though he said that he needed her. For some reason, he'd attached to her, said she gave him peace. She set the apple by her bedside lamp.

They never talked of what he did- the gang stuff, the dealing, none of it. Their conversations always ran to things like the Dodgers, or religion, or what Italy must look like, or whether Marco would ever pass a literature test without her help. They were like two people staring across the Atlantic Ocean and talking about the boardwalk, but the banality served its purpose in the lives of two kids with too many other heavy things to worry about.

They were more than friends, and even that term wasn't quite right. They never lost themselves in each others' bodies and they only saw each other when Marco felt like stopping by, usually with his hair mussed and smelling of sex. Vera knew he took care of such things with other girls, girls he could screw and get rid of before the sweat had even cooled on their bodies. Intimacy was never one of his strong suits, and she had to wonder why he usually ended up here after being with someone else. It was something she'd never figured out, but Marco was like that. Sometimes she thought he didn't even understand himself.

Marco watched her hungrily. She wasn't as skinny as she was when he left, and her breasts and hips had rounded nicely. The parchment paper translucency of her skin had vanished, and her once sunken cheeks were rosy. Even her blue eyes were brighter. If he had a weakness, she was it. They never hung out outside or went to do things, like bowling or go for pizza. He always came here, to her room, a quiet place with a quiet girl that didn't expect anything of him other than that he would knock on the window when he wanted to see her. He had never thought of her like the other girls he fucked, because she'd always been so ragged and sick from her treatments. Who wanted to screw a bag of pain-ridden bones? Nah. Marco could get pussy anywhere.

But now… now was different. She looked as normal as he'd ever seen her look. And he hadn't fucked anything but his hand in three long years. Though he'd never tell her, Marco had often wondered what it would have been like to sleep with Vera. Would the sex be better because of her effect on him, or would it be boring? He licked his lips as she sat lightly next to him on the bed. Time to find out.

She was unprepared for the hands that cupped her head, holding her face in place as he kissed her greedily. Marco never came here for this. Suddenly, the whole dynamic of their relationship was thrown off, and Vera didn't know what to do. Things had changed.

He growled and nipped, sucked and laved as he coaxed her out of her shyness, demanded that she respond to him. He knew good and damn well she was untried. Who wanted to make it with the neighborhood's teenage invalid? No one, that's who. He bet less than a dozen people even remembered she lived there. Slowly, trying his meager patience, she responded, and Marco desperately kept himself in hand as he systematically stripped off her clothes. He'd waited three years for some action, he wasn't going to blow it early.

Stunned was a good word for how she was feeling- stunned and confused. Why her? Why had Marco come to her for this? Surely he had some other girl waiting to slake his thirst, but Vera tried to match his ministrations. If she was honest, she was a little greedy for this herself. She'd never had a boyfriend, never been kissed, never lost her virginity in the back of a car or movie theater. Her life was about needles and pills and scans, new treatments and grim hospitals. Marco was everything she wasn't. Vital. Intense. Immortal. There was something about him that drew her, even now, with him on his knees between her spread legs, something that pushed out all the fear and embarrassment. When he was focused on something, Marco was like a force of nature. She wished, just this once, to be part of that raging storm that was the pale-skinned Italian looking down at her with hooded eyes.

Heart thudding in his throat, Marco could actually hear the blood rushing in his ears. No howling in his mind, no thoughts clamoring for prominence. She was like the center of a hurricane. It was silent, sunny and perfect, but the boiling black clouds hovered just out of sight, waiting to consume him once again. Leon, his fucking Deuces, everything fell away here with her. Sliding his body down to lay on top of her, he threaded the fingers of one hand through her thick black hair.

"This is gonna hurt, isn't it?" Her voice was soft as she looked up at him. Those delicate features and the thin moustache with the mole just above the corner of his mouth so different from how they looked sitting next to him. His face was foreign to her this close, just above her own.

Marco studied her face, the reddened cheek roughened from his stubble, the lips swollen from his own demanding mouth. Out of nowhere, the urge bubbled up to lie to her, to tell her it would be great and then just pump into her until he collapsed, regardless of how she felt. Ruthless even in this, he thought hysterically, but Marco dug down, searching for that part of him that he opened so rarely. "Yeah," he murmured, rubbing a thumb across her lip. "Yeah, it's gonna hurt. But only for a minute."

Vera nodded and nudged him with her hips, signaling her assent. Pain was something she knew well, and she thought she was prepared for it. The slight burn and stretch of him entering her was tolerable, and she smoothed a tendril of hair back from his forehead as a silent show of her appreciation. He was going slowly, very slowly, and she knew that was counter to every instinct in Marco's lithe body. Nothing about him was ever slow. Suddenly, he stopped pushing and she could feel him butting up against something inside her.

Marco gave her a moment before he lunged forward, shredding her maidenhood in one violent surge. Her yelp of pain did strange things to him- one part reveled in the sound, knowing he had torn it from her throat. That base level of him took the cry as proof that he had marked her, taken her virginity, a thing no one else would ever have. He owned something that was unique, and she had given it to him willingly. It made his conqueror's soul howl in pleasure. Still, he'd seen her back in the days when she couldn't get out of bed, too weak from her latest treatment, moaning with agony that wouldn't abate. That small corner of his mind was sorry to cause her any more pain.

Long moments passed as both their bodies remained rigid, one with leashed tension and one with pain. Slowly, the fire deep in her core abated and she could feel Marco inside her, thick and still. There was more to learn, Vera was sure of it. Sucking in a deep breath for courage, she rocked her hips gently and gasped at the sensations. It was amazing, like velvet stroking inside of her and tickling a million different nerve centers.

When she shifted beneath him, Marco raised himself to his elbows and set a slow pace, as much to accustom her to the rhythm of sex as to torture himself. A strong man drew pleasure out to knife edge fineness, and Marco was a strong man. Three years of enforced abstinence would not cause him to shame himself.

Time passed, though Vera couldn't be sure if it was minutes or hours or days. As usual when Marco came to visit, the world narrowed to him and her. This time, there was so much more to savor- kisses to experience, spots to find that made him shudder, the way he made her moan and die a thousand little deaths when he bit her neck just below her ear. She wanted it to last forever.

Over and over again, Marco suppressed the burgeoning orgasm creeping up on him. He pushed himself just a little further, exerted just a touch more of his flagging self-control, wanting to draw another reaction from her to catalogue and tuck away as his private possession. The taste of her nipple, the wild buck of her hips when he bit her neck, the mindless moan and shudder she gave him when his fingers found the nub of flesh hidden away in the curls between her legs. All of them belonged to him now, but he wanted the final prize she could grant him. Her first orgasm. He wanted that, too, to take out and examine in his mind whenever he chose. Marco wanted to remind himself that he could give pleasure, not just take. He was capable of anything, he told himself.

Thrashing, she dug her nails into Marco's back, drawing a hiss from him- of pleasure or pain, she wasn't sure, and she didn't care. He was driving her insane, and that was something she was positive of. Something was just out of reach, some new sensation that fluttered around her and brushed her with its gossamer wings before flitting away. Vera reached up and wound her arms around his neck, slick with sweat, drawing his face down to hers. "Please, Marco," she pleaded.

That was all he'd been waiting for- her final capitulation, her blind trust in him to deliver her the final pleasure. The thrill of victory soared within him, and he sealed his mouth to hers as he changed the angle of his hips, mercilessly rasping her clitoris with his pelvic bone. His tongue searched out every corner of her mouth, mapping and memorizing it to relive another time. Each gasp, every hitched breath was sipped from her lips like the good Chianti he'd steal from his uncle's table every Christmas, just as tasty, just as dizzying. Suddenly, she shattered beneath him.

The world exploded, and Vera was sure it was the most magnificent thing she'd ever known. Her body hummed and bucked entirely apart from her mind, which was floating thoughtlessly in a sea of wonder. Slowly, so slowly, she came back to herself, a dreamy smile on her face.

That smile was Marco's undoing. He'd thrust her over the edge and watched her splinter, and here was his thanks, that awe-filled look in her eyes and the vague smile on her lips. With a strangled shout, he buried himself in her fully, pushing to her very depths and emptying himself in one long spurt that felt like his guts had liquefied and rushed out his cock, one moment drawn out into eternity.

Vera let him lay on her for several minutes as they both gasped for air. When he rolled to the side to lie next to her, she wasn't sure what to do next. Sit up and talk as if everything was normal? Sling an arm over his flat belly and go to sleep? Lie there and stare up at the ceiling and continue to torture herself with options?

His mind was blessedly empty, more so than it had ever been when he'd visited her. Marco had to remind himself just to roll off her. After a few minutes, he reached out and clasped her hand without thought. He'd never held her hand before today, not in all the years he'd known her. It was a strangely childish gesture. He dangled his other hand off the narrow bed for his cigarettes before remembering where he was and who he was with. He let his favorite shiny black shirt drop back to the floor.

Smiling, Vera watched silently. Marco never mentioned her illness at all; in fact, he studiously avoided the topic, even back in the days when she had more bruises and puncture marks on her arm than three junkies combined. He never smoked here, even when he would sit out on the fire escape late at night, talking with her as she lay in her bed. It was simply something he refused to acknowledge, and she was more than willing to forget who and what she was long enough to spend time with her unusual, sometimes friend.

Eventually, it all had to end. A siren drawing closer to their block roused Marco from the bed, unselfconsciously moving to the window without a stitch of clothing. Vera took the opportunity to admire his form- whatever he was away from here, he was still growing up into a handsome man. He spun towards her suddenly, straddling her on the bed to reach his pile of clothes on the other side.

Even now, with her, he had to exert his dominance in some form, and she smiled inwardly as he remained straddling her body as he buttoned up his shirt. Marco was such a mass of contradictions. Maybe that's why she liked when he came around- there was always some new facet of his personality pushing out to examine.

As he tugged on his jeans, his blue eyes studied her closely. His habit of not blinking could be downright intimidating when he stared at someone, and Marco counted on its effect now. She was being a pain in the ass though, only lying on her side and staring back. "I gotta go," he snarled finally, annoyed that she wasn't reacting as he wanted. He wanted her to cling, to ask for a vow of love, a kiss, all that shit girls always wanted. Why wasn't she fucking cooperating?

Vera nodded and pushed to her feet, slipping her nightgown back on as she did so. It was cold without his larger body next to her- she'd never realized how warm another human body was. "All right."

The need to lash out, to make her act as she was supposed to flared and he shoved her back down on the bed, coming over to cover her and nip roughly at her lip. "Aren't ya gonna fuckin' kiss me goodbye?"

Marco was not prepared for it when she clasped his jaw gently and pressed her lips sweetly to his own, and Vera had to smile at his look of confusion. Poor Marco. He wasn't going to bully her here. She'd known him too long, even if it had never been physical until now. It was entirely possible that she knew him better than his own mother. She drew a circle around his mole. "I'll see ya around, Marco."

He was halfway out the window, one foot already on the fire escape, when something made him turn around. "You're not just a fuck," Marco told her quietly, his eyes intense. "I coulda made it with a dozen other girls. I don't know why I thought of you. I don't know why I came here."

Wrapping her arms around herself for warmth, Vera gave a low laugh. "Yeah ya do, Marco, somewhere in that complicated brain of yours, ya do. I'll see ya around."

It wasn't until both of his feet hit the pavement that Marco realized that something had to be done about Leon, sooner rather than later. If he got rid of that son of a bitch and his stupid brother Bobby, the Deuces would crumble like a cardboard box in a rainstorm. Then the block would be his again, and everything would be right. He'd sell what he wanted to who he wanted, make the money he deserved and plan his way out of this shithole borough. Maybe Vegas. He heard that Vegas was the place to go for a man with ambition these days.

One week later, Cecilia Vendetti wept with a just handful of mourners at her son's funeral. Her beautiful troubled Marco, just returned to her, and now he was gone for good. She railed and sobbed, screamed and prayed, lamenting her poor baby's passing. Some hours later, when the dirt from the grave was still settling and the flowers still fresh from the funeral, a single girl made her way slowly to his plot. Kneeling by the headstone, she buried a pack of Lucky Strikes and laughed bitterly.

"You stupid bastard, you're too young to die," Vera said sadly. "I brought ya something useful, Marco. I know you're probably sitting in purgatory wonderin' what the hell you're gonna do with a mountain of flowers, so at least now you can smoke while you're bitchin' about it." She folded her skirts under her knees demurely and looked around. It'd been a long time since she went outside for something other than doctors, pharmacies or groceries.

A raven landed on a dead tree branch not far away and began to caw noisily. "Who's gonna knock on my window now, Marco? I knew you'd come back after prison, but it's kinda hard to come back from death, ya know?" She sighed and smoothed the dirt over the cigarettes. "I gotta go, Marco. I'm tired these days." A single tear trickled down her cheek. "I'll see ya around."

Vera Barbieri's funeral was small, even smaller than Marco's. Her mother and their priest, her doctor and a few friends of her mother's were all that attended. No one came claiming to be Vera's friend, and her mother looked at the next row up to the spot where Marco Vendetti had been interred only a week or so ago. She suspected he might have been the only person that would have come if he'd been alive, but she wasn't sure. The kid had been a first-rate asshole, someone she tolerated only because Vera had asked her to. Maybe he would have come, maybe he wouldn't.

She thought the neighborhood was well rid of him. He wanted the world and would destroy anything in his path to get it, but there were too many new graves, too many missing young faces these days.

Shaking her thoughts away from the Vendetti boy, Jean Barbieri smoothed a hand through the newly-laid dirt over her daughter's grave. Vera had known she was dying for months now, but just last week she handed her a pack of cigarettes and an apple. She'd sat across from her mother and gripped her hand. "It's almost time, Ma." The words were gentle but firm. "When I'm gone, I want ya to tuck these in with me. No, don't ask- it's stupid. Can ya do it for me?"

Jean understood the apple- it was a Red Delicious, her daughter's favorite, even if it was on the mushy side now. The cigarettes, though? Vera had never smoked a cigarette in her life. Had she looked up, she would have seen the crushed, semi-dissolved top of a Lucky Strikes pack sticking out of Marco's grave, but Jean's eyes only rose as far as the newly-chiseled inscription in her daughter's headstone.

'_What is twisted in this life will be unraveled in the next- the Lord has granted us an eternity to discover the depths of our souls.'_


End file.
